Although it's not a top performer in every game, the Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition makes excellent use of Nvidia?s latest upper-midrange GPU.

Over the last several months, Nvidia has made a strong point of releasing its newest 600-series video cards with powerful reference specifications that have turned out astonishing performance at the low-high end (the GeForce GTX 670), the high-high end (the GTX 680), and the dual-GPU ridiculously high end (the GTX 690). But in filling in the supporting foundation, the company has given its board partners more initial latitude. This is evident with the Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition, which tweaks Nvidia’s GTX 660 Ti chipset in several crucial ways that help the card deliver additional performance. Even with those changes, the card is not a surefire winner in every situation, but it’s a highly respectable choice for $329.

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Because Zotac’s card doesn’t stray far from the foundational technologies used in the GTX 660 Ti chipset—and, by extension, those utilized in Nvidia’s new Kepler architecture overall—we’re not going to spend a lot of time rehashing them here. Check out our technical rundown of the GTX 660 Ti for more thorough information.

As far as this specific card is concerned, it significantly boosts the key areas of Nvidia’s reference design. Whereas the general spec provides for a 915MHz base clock, Zotac has upped this card’s to 1,033MHz. As a result, the boost clock speed has increased as well: to 1,100MHz from 980MHz. And the 6,008MHz memory clock in this AMP! Edition model is 6,608MHz, resulting in total memory bandwidth of 158.6GBps rather than the standard 144.2GBps.

In every other way, this is a typical enthusiast model, bearing a hefty fan–heat sink unit that blocks a second expansion slot. Unlike many enthusiast cards, however, this one is sized to fit in pretty much any tower case: It’s only about 8 inches in length. It requires two six-pin PCI Express (PCIe) power connectors to function, and Zotac recommends a minimum power supply of 600 watts—a sizable increase over the 450 watts suggested for the stock-clocked version. Output connectors include two dual-link DVI (one DVI-I, one DVI-D), one HDMI 1.4a, and one DisplayPort 1.2. It features traditional Zotac coloring, with a black PCB and fan shroud, and two large orange fans that are impossible to not notice. In addition to the usual user manual and driver disc, bundled in the box are a DVI-to-VGA adapter, two Molex-to-PCIe power adapters, and a three-day pass for the TrackMania 2 Canyon online racing game.

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Of course, what really matters with any video card is performance, and there the Zotac acquits itself reasonably—if not spectacularly—well. Nvidia recommended comparing GTX 660 Ti cards against those using AMD’s Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition chipset. With the overclocked Zotac, there was a bit of a price gulf, but even so, Zotac’s card proved superior essentially across the board. So we also compared the Zotac with a reference-model AMD Radeon HD 7950 running the most current beta driver (12.7) and recently released BIOS (July 2012, which should be available for most cards within the next few weeks); various versions of the 7950 are available on Newegg for about what you'd pay for the Zotac, once you factor in rebates. This revealed more useful—and uneven—results.

In a number of cases the AMD card did better, and sometimes a lot better, at resolutions of either 1,680 by 1,050 or 1,920 by 1,200. AMD won with 66.3 frames per second (fps) and 54.1fps, respectively, in Aliens vs. Predator (versus 54.8fps and 43.9fps for the Zotac), 44.8fps and 42.1fps in DiRT Showdown (versus 31.7fps and 27.9fps), and 38fps and 30fps in Metro 2033 (versus 30.7fps and 23.7fps). (AMD technically won at Batman: Arkham City, too, but there both cards finished above the 60fps threshold at both resolutions, so we’re not sweating over Nvidia’s prowess there.) In Just Cause 2, AMD was again in the lead—albeit almost within a reasonable margin of error (67fps and 57.9 fps versus 65.4fps and 57.5fps).

The Zotac card was not without its own wins. It took Futuremark 3DMark 11 in a walk, using both the Performance (8,703 versus 7,615) and Extreme (2,842 and 2,544) presets. The Heaven Benchmark, although a synthetic test, can be pretty punishing, but the Zotac pushed out in front with 44.1fps at 1,680 by 1,050 and 37fps at 1,920 by 1,200—in front of, if just barely, of the 7950’s 41.1fps and 36.3fps. Lost Planet 2, admittedly an Nvidia title, went to Zotac as well, with 74.8fps and 66.4fps (versus 56.3fps and 51fps). But the AMD-branded Total War: Shogun 2 was firmly Nvidia’s territory here, with its frame rates of 43.2fps and 34.5fps noticeably ahead of AMD’s 34.8fps and 27.6fps.

This particular mix of scores across older and newer titles alike suggests no hard-and-fast rules as to superior functionality, so our gaze necessarily turns toward other considerations. Foremost among these is electricity usage. This is one of Nvidia’s strongest suits this generation, and we see that trend continue even with this overclocked card. Despite its numerous victories in our performance tests, AMD’s card consumes nearly 34 watts more power than the Zotac one when measured under full load with an Extech Datalogger. That’s not a small difference, and over the course of many hours of game play, it’s one that could definitely show up on your power bill.

Additional factors that may directly impact your purchasing decision are more in the way of features, and are largely a matter of personal taste. You still have more (and more exciting) options for multimonitor gaming with AMD’s Eyefinity-equipped cards, for example. And Nvidia’s built-in PhysX physics processing and newer innovations like TXAA anti-aliasing and Adaptive VSync may tip the scales for other discriminating users.

In terms of raw performance, the duel between the Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition and the AMD Radeon HD 7950 is more or less a draw. We might give the tiniest edge to Zotac here, if only because of the power usage, but ultimately what games you play will determine which is the better card for you. If you can spend closer to $400, the Editors' Choice GTX 670 offers even more oomph across a range of titles, but both the 660 Ti and the 7950 and 7870 cards bracketing it are well priced. So if you're limited to exploring the $300-$350 price range, both companies' choices there are good ones.

Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been building computers for himself and others for more than 20 years, and he spent several years working in IT and helpdesk capacities before escaping into the far more exciting world...
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